What is NIL? Former NFL Executive Jack Easterby on the future of college sports

The future of college athletics continues to evolve, with long-standing conferences and rivalries dissolving and athletes now able to profit from their name, image and likeness — often referred to as NIL.

Jack Easterby, a former NFL executive with the New England Patriots and Houston Texans, joined News On 6 to discuss the current state and future of college sports, including how NIL has impacted athletes and universities.

Explaining NIL

Easterby began by providing a broad explanation of NIL and its origins, emphasizing the legal decisions that allowed athletes to profit off their personal brands.

“Well, you have to go back several years when, you know, the court decided that athletes could now profit off of their name, image and likeness, because historically, all players and student-athletes that competed on college campuses across our country weren’t able to have jobs and or make money,” Easterby said.

“The NCAA primarily profited off of their name, image and likeness through the programming that they offered, whether that was a bowl game or that was the NCAA basketball tournament. Obviously, those revenues went to the universities and the NCAA. So the courts decided that that wasn’t legal anymore, and the student-athletes had a say in this. So there began kind of a fracture of the old system, and now we’re kind of in between two systems on how the money is actually going to get into the appropriate pockets.”

Easterby noted that the last two to three years have been a transition period as the system shifts from the old model to the new.

Creative Income Streams for Universities

When asked about schools getting creative with income streams, Easterby said schools are already exploring unique revenue-generating methods and partnerships.

“Absolutely, I think if you look at the Big Ten and the SEC most recently, meeting with private equity partners and looking at opportunities for marketing rights and or brokering off different parts of the things that are sellable or potentially priced out to a public market, I do think you’ll see a lot of revenue arms attached to universities,” he said.

“Obviously, each institution is a not-for-profit institution that primarily specializes in their education, right? But then there’s going to be arms that produce, you know, sports programming and/or really marketing for their sports teams. And so yes, there’s going to be huge arms and hugely profitable arms that come off the side of these universities. I think you’re already seeing that at the major schools, but I think it will go throughout all — it will be pervasive throughout all of college athletics very soon.”

Player Empowerment and Transfer Trends

Easterby was also asked about the rise in player empowerment and athletes using their NIL leverage to transfer when they feel promises have been broken.

“Yeah, there’s some of that. I think the main issue there is the rules haven’t been codified, right?” Easterby said. “If you go back, basically, like I said, two and a half years ago, obviously, when this began to be more of a free market enterprise, there were no rules that governed that enterprise.”

“In the NFL, we were also fortunate to have a collective bargaining agreement, right, that governed every action we have. The NCAA doesn’t have that yet,” he said. “And so now there’s going to be some, you know, some things that need some litigation, and, quite frankly, need some courts to step up and decide some of the policies that will hopefully, you know, create a more regulated environment.”

Despite the uncertainty, Easterby sees benefits for student-athletes navigating the NIL landscape.

“If you’re looking at the student-athlete side, you know, they’re going to develop some really cool skills earlier in their lives now. When they have representation and other advisers start at age 16 and 17, you know, they’re going to become little small businesses early in their life,” he said.

“That will hopefully bless them as they go from school to school, or as they matriculate through the college process and prepare,” Easterby said. “I think they’ll show up to professional teams and professional leagues with a lot more reps as to what the professional life is really like, and hopefully they’ll be a little better at it.”

The Rise of General Managers in College Athletics

Easterby also addressed the recent hiring of Jim Nagy as the University of Oklahoma’s football general manager, noting that the role could become more common across college athletics.

“When you’re looking at a revenue share — so a true revenue share where money is coming into the institution and then is required to be dispersed, which is what we’re hearing is going to be the precedent across the country — you know, each institution has roughly $20.5 million to disperse,” Easterby said.

“That obviously brings into play: Who will be that asset allocator, and how will that asset allocator be accountable to the school?” Easterby said. “And so general manager is one title that I think people have come up with.”

“Some of the major institutions have hired a former personnel executive that can help them with that more asset allocation than anything, right? Best-in-suit completes to give them an appropriate amount of money that is a trade for their services, and hopefully will allow the team to compete at a high level,” Easterby said. “And so, yeah, I think it’s more asset allocation than it is generally managing, but I do think that universities will begin to hire good asset allocators that can be accountable to the boards and to the president and to the AD for how they spend their money on talent.”